Greek Salad, Hummus topped with red & green peppers, Humus with Tahini and Tabouleh Salad and a Hummus Chicken Wrap on the menu at Nanoosh restaurant at Garden State Plaza in Paramus.

The recorded music is played low, the lighting is subdued, and there's a candle on every table. Still, Nanoosh isn't exactly an intimate hideaway; the busy concourses of Garden State Plaza are just outside the big picture windows.

Hummus topped with red & green peppers on the menu at Nanoosh restaurant at Garden State Plaza in Paramus.

The essential information: The ingredients are organic, management says, and cooked up with imagination. The hummus is creamy and tasty, made with imported chickpeas and no garlic. Dinner is served in large portions. And despite all this, keeping the bill under $50 for two is easy. This is a place not to be ignored.

A made-up name

Nanoosh, incidentally, is a made-up word from nana, the Hebrew word for mint, and nosh, the Yiddish noun for snack.

I usually avoid any soup I haven't made myself because restaurants often serve what can best be described as "salt soup." But the idea of soup on a raw night was a great temptation. We struck gold.

My friend chose a small — remember that word, small — bowl of tomato soup ($3.95) that was far removed from anything you ever brought home in a can from the supermarket. This was a creamy brew, bearing an unmistakable tomato tang, prepared with celery, onions, cucumber, basil pesto and a touch of vinegar.

Try the soups

Tomato soup may be good, but lentil soup is better. My small bowl ($3.95) was a thick, almost pudding-like rendering of brown lentils flavored with carrots, onions, cumin and sumac. It was rich and grainy, with the aggressive flavor of the cumin noticeable but not assaultive.

Those "small" bowls were bigger than many of the "large" ones you're frequently served.

For dinner, I ordered a tabbouleh salad ($8.95). The bulgur from which it was made retained most of its characteristic crunch and, in addition to the traditional mint, parsley, tomato and onion, it was prepared with apple and pomegranate — two very nice touches. The menu lists 21 garnishes for salads and wraps, ranging from tahini, olives or onions for $1 extra to chicken, beef or tuna for $2.75.

I had my salad topped with feta cheese for $1.50. The kitchen didn't simply sprinkle a bit of cheese on my dinner; in fact, the top of the brown tabbouleh was turned almost pure white with feta.

Nanoosh calls its menu "an organic take on classic Mediterranean," but it's not bound by rigid, traditional geography. Wraps, for example, start with a Mexican tortilla, and quinoa, usually thought of as a staple of the Andes, was available in several dishes.

My friend ordered the hummus egg wrap ($10.95), which was a tortilla stuffed with salad, tahini, a hard-boiled egg, a spicy (but not a killing) sauce and some excellent hummus. This and six other wraps on the menu are accompanied by a choice of small salads — tabbouleh, quinoa or Mediterranean.

Only two desserts

Back to portion size for a moment. As long as you don't visit Nanoosh after coming off a hunger strike, one small bowl of soup each and one wrap with a side salad might satisfy two people, no doubt to management's chagrin.

There's a grand total of two selections on the dessert menu, and since one of them was rice pudding, we split a portion of the other. (There are just so many times you can check out the rice pudding at a Mediterranean restaurant or diner.)

A cake to remember

It was an inspired decision. That second dessert was billed simply as "chocolate cake," a name that is too, too modest. This was a cake to remember, a thick slice of chocolate cake ($4.95) made with yogurt — and not overly moist or gummy — and flavored with a thick smear of apricot jam, which itself was topped with chopped pistachios. The combination of flavors and textures is in a class by itself.

Billy Kotler, the owner of this Nanoosh — there are three more in New York City — said the chocolate cake is made by a commercial baker from Nanoosh's recipe. He also gets his beef and chicken dishes from Nanoosh's 4,000-square-foot kitchen in Manhattan, which supplies the four restaurants in this little chain. Everything else on the menu is made in Kotler's kitchen at his Garden State Plaza location.